Greece and its international creditors agreed on the need to strengthen policy efforts to support the economy and comply with its bailout terms after more than a week of meetings in Athens.
Representatives from the so-called troika of the European Commission, European Central Bank and International Monetary Fund met with Greek Finance Minister Yannis Stournaras in Athens Sunday at the conclusion of the meetings. The talks will determine whether Greece continues receiving funds from the country’s 240 billion euros ($297 billion) of rescue packages.
“The discussions on the implementation of the program were productive and there was an overall agreement on the need to strengthen policy efforts to achieve its objectives,” the troika institutions said in a joint statement Sunday. Inspectors from the country’s creditors will return to Athens in early September to continue the talks, according to the troika.
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One euro price signs hang over discounted goods on sale at a store in Athens. (Bloomberg) |
Greek Prime Minister Antonis Samaras on Aug. 1 wrenched agreement from the two party leaders supporting his coalition government on the need to determine 11.5 billion euros of budget cuts for 2013 and 2014 to keep the international rescue funds flowing. That package must be completed by early September, before a meeting of finance ministers from the 17-nation euro area, a Greek finance ministry official, who asked not to be named, said after Sunday’s meeting.
“We made a lot of good progress,” the IMF representative Poul Thomsen said Sunday in Athens. “We’ll take a break now and come back in early September.”
Greece is in its fifth year of a recession that’s been worsened by the austerity measures to cut a budget deficit that reached more than five times the euro-area’s limit in 2009, sparking the continent’s debt crisis. The country conducted the biggest sovereign-debt restructuring in history this year before elections in May and June plunged it into political turmoil an put its place in the euro bloc at risk.
The troika representatives have been in Athens since July 24 meeting with Greek ministers and political leaders to determine whether Greece is meeting the conditions to get the next batch of funds. The country risks running out of money without the disbursement of 4.2 billion euros that was initially due in June as the first instalment of a 31 billion-euro transfer.
The country may sell 6 billion euros of Treasury bills this month, 2 billion euros more than initially planned, and tap bank recapitalization funds in order to cover its financing needs, Kathimerini reported on Aug. 1, without saying how it got the information. The funds will be used to cover 3.2 billion euros of redemptions for bonds held by the ECB that mature Aug. 20, the Athens-based newspaper said.
(Bloomberg)
